Gary Numan
Interview by Will Hodgkinson
Friday December 20, 2002
The Guardian
Gary Numan. Photo: Eamonn McCabe
Gary Numan's world is a strange mix of the cosily domestic and the
scarily industrial. The Essex cottage that he shares with his wife,
two enormous dogs and six cats is a rustic haven of floral
arrangements, photographs and soft furnishings, while his CD
collection is made up of the harshest music known to humanity. And
while Numan himself is a genial, throroughly British man with an old-
fashioned manner, he's dressed head to toe in black, from his dyed
hair to his heavy-soled cyber-boots. He occupies his own genre of
suburban Gothic.
"I don't think I've ever listened to music simply for the pleasure
of listening to it," says Numan, who threw out his entire record
collection a few years back in a fit of spring-cleaning. "I listen
to what people are doing and where they are going. Once I've
explored an area, I'm ready to move on, and my collection is
primarily recent."
Numan made his name at the turn of the 1980s with coldly engaging
electronic pop hits like Are "Friends" Electric? and Cars, but his
last studio album, 2001's Pure, went much further with a hard,
industrial sound. "I have no sentimental attachment to music," he
says. "Even when I was young, an interest in music was a by-product
of an interest in the technology that made it. So when synthesisers
came along, it was obvious that I would be attracted to them."
Even electronic music didn't hold any interest for Numan in itself
when he started out. "I always associated it with men wearing capes
standing on ice rinks, so I wasn't into it at all," he says. "But I
ended up in a studio and there was a Mini Moog left behind. It had
been left on this heavy bass programme, so when I pressed the
keyboard this huge sound came out of it, and so it was pure chance
that changed everything."
T-Rex were the first band that Numan got into, and he admired Marc
Bolan for being the world's first cosmic heart-throb. "My favourite
album is The Slider, and one of the very few old albums I've got on
CD. I liked the lifestyle he went for - having a Rolls-Royce when he
couldn't drive and that. A proper rock star, before all this
politically correct bollocks came along."
One of the modern bands that Numan has got into is the relentlessly
heavy German industrial metal outfit Rammstein. "You know some bands
do crowd-surfing at their concerts? Well the keyboard player of
Rammstein does it in an inflatable dinghy." Trust the Germans to
come up with an ingenious yet practical way of creating rock'n'roll
mayhem. "When I saw them, he went all the way to the back of the
auditorium, got back on stage and didn't fall out once. He didn't
even have any paddles."
There's a lot of fire with Rammstein as well. "At one point they
come out on stage with these contraptions on their heads and - I'm
not joking - a 20-foot flame was blasting out of this bloke's face.
It's well impressive."
Songs of Faith and Devotion, the 1993 album by Depeche Mode, is one
of the big inspirations for Numan's harder sound. "Important for me.
It came along at the right time, when I was really unhappy with what
I had been doing," he says. "My career started well, then it went
downhill for about 10, 15 years until I was in deep trouble by '93.
I had lost sight of what I was doing entirely. They tried to
repossess this house, I was selling nothing...it was a bleak time.
So I had nothing to lose by writing songs that didn't have a hope of
getting on the radio. As a result, the music was much heavier and
darker. Then Depeche Mode's album came out, and it was food for me.
This is the pinnacle of everything they have done, and it has become
the most important album for me since I started. It saved me."
Marilyn Manson, who often cites Numan as an early inspiration, has
become a friend and is another current favourite. Is Manson
genuinely strange, or is there a touch of panto to his wicked-witch
imagery? "Doing this for a living gives you the luxury of amplifying
parts of your character in a way that you couldn't do if you had a
normal life," replies Numan. "It's not fake, but a grossly
exaggerated version of what's already in him. Although with Trent
Reznor, I don't think it is exaggerated."
Trent Reznor is the man behind Nine Inch Nails, a far darker
proposition than Manson's monster-mash horror rock. "He's always
been cool when I've met him, but other people have said that he's
certainly...different," says Numan. "Manson can shape his oddities
into a saleable form. Reznor's much further out, and a genius.
People talk about me being influential, but all I did was nudge open
the door. People like Trent bashed the door down and trampled me
into the ground. He's a proper artist, and every time he puts out a
record it moves the goalposts."
Numan's wife Gemma, who was his number one fan before marrying him,
loves Nine Inch Nails. "They're her favourite band. She says it's
me, but it's not true. Whenever I come home it's always Nine Inch
Nails on the stereo. Never me."